The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President’s Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. And thirty years later, if you’re going to read only one book on Watergate, that’s still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.

Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron’s house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.

Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron’s past—and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron’s rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit—a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it’s a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.

Related Articles

The two primary causes of complaints filed with EU national regulators in the first quarter of 2019 were the execution of orders (33%) and unauthorised business (14%). The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the […]

2020 U.S. equity gains wiped out by public health emergency Dollar drops Gold and Treasurys near multi-year highs All U.S. equity index gains for 2020 were wiped out on Friday, eviscerated by fears the still […]

A Key Turn Date occurs when a number of different markets all reverse direction at the same time…giving us a very valuable window into market psychology. At the risk of being scorned by psychologists, I’d […]

Bitcoin is the most successful commercial application of blockchain technology, suggests Wu Xiaoling the previous Deputy Governor of China’s Central Bank. However, she also points out Bitcoin’s weakness as a private currency. “Bitcoin, even as a private […]

June started very violently for Bitcoin. On the first day of the month of June, the primary cryptocurrency recorded a 3-month high after touching the $10,500 resistance mark. However, the drop was even quicker, as […]